For those who are home, and for those who are on the way. For those who support the historic and just return of the land of Israel to its people, forever loyal to their inheritance, and its restoration.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

...But the almost certain silence in the United Nations about the attack on the refugee camp in Yemen is worth recalling the next time Israel is attacked for doing far less to protect itself. I don’t know the details about the Saudi attack, and perhaps it was carried out with care and precision. The point is, no one is going to bother to find out.

An airstrike killed dozens of people Monday at a camp for displaced people in northern Yemen, in what appeared to be the single deadliest attack since a Saudi ­Arabia-led coalition sent warplanes to target Shiite insurgents advancing across the country.

As many as 40 people died and about 200 were wounded in the attack on the Mazraq camp in Hajjah province, said Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, which runs aid programs at the facility.

The Yemeni Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, accused the Saudi-led coalition of hitting the camp, located in an area under the control of the insurgents. Saudi officials did not confirm that. But, asked about the bombing, Saudi Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri, a coalition spokesman, asserted that the rebels were setting up positions in civilian areas and said that coalition warplanes had taken fire Monday from a residential area, forcing a “decisive response,” according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

So, taking fire from a civilian area in which shooters were hiding, the Saudis struck back. When Israel does that in Gaza, where it is the common practice of Hamas to hide in and shoot from civilian areas, and to store weapons in schools and hospitals (including those run by the United Nations), what happens? Israel is universally condemned. UN investigation commissions are appointed, and reports such as the egregious “Goldstone Report” (officially, the “The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict”) are issued. The UN Security Council holds special sessions, and the UN Human Rights Council adds additional “hate Israel” meetings to its usual list.

I cannot recall an incident where Israel struck at a refugee camp and killed 40 people all at once, also injuring 200 others, but I am willing to bet on the world reaction to this Saudi attack: zero. No meetings, commissions, no reports.

...Is it paranoia if they say at every opportunity they really are out to attack your home and community? And they have colossal means of doing so?

One of a collection of snapshots published in
December 2014 on an Iranian military website
under the headline "We come..." depictsuniformed Iranian soldiers touring southern
Lebanon, close to the border with
Israel [Iranian source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
31 March '15..

Israel, and especially our country's border zone, is often described as tense. This might seem odd so long as no actual shooting or rocket firing is taking place. Some might see it as paranoia, maybe even war-mongering. But it's less so to Israelis. Many of us understand that the general level of a population's anxiety is a function of the extent to which real and physical threats are reported. If you don't know they are there, or choose to look in the other direction, you may feel more relaxed. But that does not mean there are no enemies, or that they are not deployed out there.

Iran is close to putting its forces on Israel’s northeast border for the first time, as its allies crush rebel groups in the Golan Heights area of Syria. The prospect of Iranian troops being posted on a frontier that has been calm for decades is causing alarm in Israel, and comes as international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear ambitions near a climax.“Iran will be so close to the Israelis that it will no longer need long-range missiles to hit them,” said Abu Ali, a fighter with Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah organisation who has served multiple combat tours in Syria...

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, .

Students for Justice in Palestine is a growing activist group on American and Canadian universities. It attracts Islamic extremist and radical Leftist activists to campuses for events that demonize and delegitimize Israel and Jews.

Americans for Peace&Tolerance - Promoting peaceful coexistence in an ethnically diverse America. Learn more at www.peaceandtolerance.org/

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, .

We of course don’t ever expect to see a Guardian headline titled ‘Palestinian terrorists attempted to kill thousands of Israeli civilians in 2014′, because, as former AP correspondent Matt Friedman argued, the media operate under the assumption that the only party that matters in covering the conflict is Israel, and thus Palestinians can only exist as passive victims of Israeli aggression.

Adam Levick..
ukmediawatch.org..
30 March '15..

The belief, held by the overwhelming majority of Jewish Britons, that the UK media’s coverage of Israel fuels antisemitism, is largely based on the manner in which headlines, text and imagery in reports on Palestinian casualties imputes Israeli guilt (and malevolence) by failing to provide balance and relevant context.

A March 27th Guardianarticle by Mairav Zonszein (a contributor for the far-left web magazine +972) represents a prime example of this consistent journalistic failure.

In addition to the misleading headline, the accompanying text provides almost no background on the circumstances surrounding the more than 2,000 Palestinian fatalities.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, .

Monday, March 30, 2015

...Everything we have seen about the Iran nuclear talks screams "catastrophically bad deal". Most people tune conclusions like that out. So we are reprinting here three exceptionally articulate and clear opinion pieces, all from the past 24 hours, as our contribution to keeping readers awake at night, at least tonight.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
30 March '15..

The negotiations for an agreement that will curb (in some sense) Iran's nuclear program and free Iran (in some sense) from international sanctions that have squeezed its economy are, by general consensus, in their final 24 hours.

No one would purchase an apartment with this degree of uncertainty and flexibility about what was agreed. It's bizarre, and that's before we take the cataclysmic scale of the dangers into account.

Today it got meaningfully worse. The Iranians pulled what one commentator we respect calls "a last minute bait-and-switch". The background is in today's New York Times ["Iran Backs Away From Key Detail in Nuclear Deal"], but Omri Ceren sums it up better than they do. The Iranians, in his words:

bargained up their centrifuge numbers for months by saying that they'd ship out whatever material they enriched, the assumption being that who cares how much uranium they enrich to 3.5% as long as they don't have it physically available to enrich further. Now that they've ratcheted up the number of centrifuges to over 6,000, they're saying they won't ship out the material... it looks like the administration got outplayed by Persian negotiators… again.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, .

...When the BBC voiceover mentioned that "Israel has denied it was responsible for this," it was only as a set-up for a distraught Palestinian mother to immediately parry: "Then who fired it? I ran outside and found my daughters. If the Israelis didn't do it, who did? Did my daughters launch the rocket?" No. But Palestinian fighters did. And if the BBC journalists responsible for this segment were more concerned with professional reporting, they would have, and could have, come closer to providing their viewers with the truth.

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA Media Analyses..
27 March '15..

If Amnesty International is seen as one of the "most prestigious" international NGOs, it is also thought to harbor "a consistent institutionalized bias against Israel." It is particularly interesting, then, that Amnesty this week released a report blaming Palestinians for a much-publicized incident that resulted in the deaths of Palestinian children and other civilians during last summer's war between Hamas and Israel.

On July 28, 2014, explosions rocked the Shati refugee camp and the nearby Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip. It was at the former location, on a street filled with children, that the most horrific damage was done. According to the Amnesty report, 13 civilians, 11 of them children, were killed as a result of a projectile that struck the camp. Officials in Gaza immediately blamed Israeli aircraft for the strike. Israel quickly responded, saying it was a Palestinian rocket, aimed at Israel but misfired, that hit the camp. Israeli spokespeople even shared an image purporting to show the source and trajectory of the misfired rockets.

At the time, many journalists covering the incident hedged their bets, reporting that the adversaries "traded blame," that Hamas accused and Israel denied, or that Hamas denied the validity of Israel's denial. But Amnesty now concludes that "the available evidence indicates that 13 Palestinian civilians were killed in the al-Shati refugee camp on 28 July as a result of a rocket fired from within the Gaza Strip," and, more specifically, states that "an independent munitions expert who examined … evidence told Amnesty International that it strongly indicated that the projectile was a Palestinian rocket."

As flawed as Amnesty and this specific report mightbe, the assessment, coming from an organization considered especially hostile to Israel, compellingly reinforces Israel's account of the events at the Shati camp and draws into sharper focus several important points.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, .

...The promotion of Edmondson’s post by “The Palestine Project” and prominent activists like Abunimah and Blumenthal is just another example illustrating an argument I have often made: “pro-Palestinian” antisemitism is not a bug, but a feature, because when your agenda is demonizing the world’s only Jewish state as too evil to be allowed to exist, you will inevitably end up using exactly the same methods and themes as those who have demonized Jews throughout the centuries.

When something bad happens, antisemites have always known whom to blame. So it was little wonder that, when Gaza was flooded after heavy rainfalls last month, the Palestinians would blame Israel and “the Jews” for maliciously opening entirely imaginary dams – and it was hardly surprising that some major media outlets didn’t hesitate to publish this story without even a minimum of fact-checking. While some of the worst offenders ultimately withdrew the story and AFP even dedicated a separate report to “dispelling the myth about Israeli ‘dams’,” professional anti-Israel propagandists were only too happy to spread what quickly became known as the “flood libel.”

Veteran anti-Israel activists Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal both tweeted a link to a post featured on a website run by “The Palestine Project,” which rejected Israeli statements that there are no dams that could be opened to flood Gaza as a “myth.”

Since both Abunimah and Blumenthal like to claim that they can be trusted to provide accurate and factual information, one should expect that they noticed that the post they linked to was prominently identified as a previously published post from another blog, and that they checked out the provided link to the original.

...As with so many other aspects of the disdain and demonization that Israel experiences in international relations, what bothers the hostile side has very little to do with Palestinian suffering. What they cannot abide is Israel's success. There's a name for the sort of activism.

We live in a country where water is a key enabler, and limiter, of habitation and success. Israel's approach to storing, treating, transporting, recycling and desalinating water is admired throughout the civilized world. It's a heroic aspect of Israel's unique history, and one of the most significant reasons why resource-poor postage-stamp-sized Israel does so well in so many different ways.

A Reuters syndicated report ["Fighters target vital water plants across Middle East: Red Cross"] published this past Wednesday seemed to be dealing with the way terrorists, who by definition, respect no red lines, are targeting water supply resources. "Militants", it says, using a common euphemism for terrorists, "in Syria, Iraq and Gaza have also used access to water and electricity supplies as "tactical weapons or as bargaining chips," the ICRC said in a report."

Reuters then seizes on an instance to prove the point:

Gaza's only power plant was damaged during the 2014 war between Israel and Palestinian militants. The Gaza Company for Generating Electricity said an Israeli tank shell hit the main fuel tanks, taking out almost all capacity.

Electricity is vital to the effective management of water. So if "an Israeli tank" eliminated the capacity of the regime now ruling Gaza, Israel stands behind Gaza's water crisis. Right? No, not at all right, and understanding the real reasons why Gaza is chronically out of electric power is essential to making sense of allegations like the one we just saw. (We will come back to it here another time.)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, .

Sunday, March 29, 2015

...So: Egypt is maintaining a strict blockade on Gaza, Hamas calls it a “crime against humanity,” Israel offers to lift its blockade in return for a five-year truce…and President Carter wants more international pressure on Israel and does not even mention Egypt’s blockade when he discusses Gaza’s problems and their possible solutions.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
29 March '15..

Jimmy Carter writes about (that is to say, against) Israel once again in The Washington Post today, in a column entitled “Rebuild Gaza.”

Why is Gaza not being rebuilt? Two reasons. First, Carter says, because Hamas and Fatah are fighting and donors are not delivering: “The $5.4 billion pledged for rebuilding was predicated on the Palestinian Authority asserting itself in Gaza. However, relations between Hamas and its political rivals, Abbas’s Fatah party, remain fraught. The authority has proven unwilling or unable to govern in Gaza. As a result, the promised reconstruction money has not been delivered.” True enough. Unless and until donors pony up the cash they promised, there will be little rebuilding. Carter’s solution is international pressure “to implement reconciliation agreements between Fatah and Hamas.” (He does not seem to realize that this “reconciliation” between the PA and a terrorist group would doom any possible negotiations between Israel and the PA, but that’s a different subject.)

Then Carter adds this second explanation for Gaza’s troubles:

The shortage of funds is the most immediate problem, but it is not the only one: Israel has restricted access to Gaza….

So he calls for “sustained pressure…to end Israel’s closure of Gaza. It is incumbent on the world to engage at the highest levels with the Palestinians, Egypt and Israel to push this process forward.”

That sentence is the sole reference to Egypt, and it shows what is wrong with Carter’s analysis. The fact is that Gaza has a border not only with Israel, but with Egypt, and that border with Egypt has been closed by the government in Cairo–for security reasons, as it fights Hamas smuggling and terror in the Sinai. Here’s what Hamas said about all this recently, according to the Jerusalem Post:

...The J Street Challenge is an important and timely documentary about a significant issue facing the American Jewish community. Since it was founded in 2008, J Street's idealistic message has attracted many Jews, young and old, who are frustrated by the Middle East conflict and sincerely want peace between Arabs and Jews. J Street has been a subject of controversy. Critics claim that J Street has divided the Jewish community and weakened American Jewish support for Israel. "The J Street Challenge" lets viewers hear both sides of this important debate over the elusive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The J Street Challenge is an important and timely documentary about a significant issue facing the American Jewish community.

Since it was founded in 2008, J Street's idealistic message has attracted many Jews, young and old, who are frustrated by the Middle East conflict and sincerely want peace between Arabs and Jews. J Street has been a subject of controversy. Critics claim that J Street has divided the Jewish community and weakened American Jewish support for Israel. "The J Street Challenge" lets viewers hear both sides of this important debate over the elusive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The film explores the reasons for J Street's appeal, as well as the diverse and at times contradictory motivations of its leaders and followers. The film is being released at a critical time for the American Jewish community given the intense efforts by the United States to resolve the conflict and influence the community's leadership to support these efforts. The Kerry peace initiative has further divided the Jewish community, with J Street working to weaken the influence of AIPAC while strongly backing the administration.

The film includes distinguished scholars and writers from a wide political spectrum, including Harvard professors Alan Dershowitz and Ruth Wisse, Rabbi Daniel Gordis of the Shalem College in Jerusalem, Caroline Glick, Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post, Professor Richard Landes of Boston University, Lenny Ben David -- former Israeli diplomat and author, and Bret Stephens, Pulitzer prize winning columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, .

The history of the Arab-Israeli conflict reveals 24 major junctures when compromise was offered since the 1920s, dating from pre-state, League of Nations Mandate to the present time. Plan after plan, including patently pro-Arab proposals, were put on the table. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, 15 agreements and memorandums have been signed. This piece examines those agreements and Arab response or compliance in each case.

Arab claims that the Israeli “Occupation” prevents peace is nothing more than a red herring. It is not “The Occupation” that Arabs reject; it is Israel 's right to exist as a Jewish, sovereign and legitimate political entity.

What prevents achieving peace is Arab rejectionism, which began in the 1880s when the first Jewish immigrants returned to the land of Israel . 1 Since the 1920s, long before the establishment of Israel or the 1967 Six-Day War, Palestinian Arabs have used a combination of diplomatic moves and violence, particularly terrorism 2 against Jewish civilians, effectively rejecting every form of compromise.

At the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Arab world's refusal to accept a non-Muslim political entity in the Middle East.

Peace requires an Arab world that recognizes Israel as a legitimate political entity. Legitimacy means a polity with viable and defendable borders where the Jews can exercise their own rights of self-determination by virtue of demographics (i.e., a Jewish majority) –hegemony that is reflected in the cultural and the political life of the Jewish nation.

The Arab refusal to recognize Israel and their attempts to destroy the Jewish state are among the defining characteristics of Palestinian society. Measures designed to destroy Israel vary from use of force (through wars, Intifadas , violent riots, revolts and terrorism) to use of economic and demographic forces (economic boycotts, demands for jobs in Israel, Palestinian infiltration into Israel without visas or other permits, and demands that Palestinian refugees from 1948 and their descendants be allowed to return to Israel). Absolute antipathy and intolerance towards non-Muslim political entities is a fate Jews shared with the Maronite Christians in Lebanon , even though Israel inhabits no more than 0.01 percent of the Middle Eastern landscape.

For almost 100 years, Palestinian behavior has been based on rejectionism and political violence. The Palestinian refugee problem created in 1948 did not spark those strategies, nor did the “Occupation” of the Territories in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, which brought Israeli control over West Bank (Judea and Samaria ) and Gaza .

Arabs have rejected the presence of Jews with political aspirations to rebuild their ancient homeland since the advent of political Zionism. When in 1891 the number of Jewish immigrants leaving the country equaled the number of new arrivals, and nine years of Zionist endeavor, had produced barely a dozen struggling and insolvent Jewish agricultural settlements. Arab notables from Jerusalem called upon the Ottoman administration to ban Jewish immigration and the sale of land to Jews. 3

At each juncture when attempts to reach a ‘live-and-let-live' solution have been advanced, Arab responses have boiled down to a two-pronged offensive that dovetails diplomacy with violence. In short, the Arabs, and particularly the Palestinians, have refused to recognize Israel as a legitimate entity or to negotiate genuine compromise. Instead, they have tried to drive the Jews out through violence and terror.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, .

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Yes, Israel must take Iran at its word and recognize that the nightmare of an Iranian regime able to back its rhetoric with substance will soon be its new reality. Under such circumstances, the Israelis would be foolish to respond to the threat with inaction.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
27 March '15..

As President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry rush to a nuclear deal that addresses few of the original issues that have sparked international concern with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, it may be useful to consider just why Israel has come to view a nuclear capable Islamic Republic of Iran as an existential threat. While there is much to criticize in the technicalities of the agreement, the consistency and frequency of Iranian threats against the Jewish state, as well as the prestige within Iran of those who have made such threats, are too often ignored.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was an unabashed racist and anti-Semite. He began his seminal essay on Islamic government—the exegesis that underlays the Islamic Revolution and Islamic Republic—by cursing the Jews. “From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda and engaged in various stratagems, and as you can see, this activity continues down to the present,” he declared.

Then, of course, there have been the repeated declarations about Israel’s destruction. Iranian authorities have declared the last Friday in Ramadan to be “Qods [Jerusalem] Day” and have reserved it for the most vitriolic sermons and threats. It was on Qods Day in 2001 that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and one of the most influential regime figures, declared, “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.” Hassan Rouhani was, of course, Supreme National Security Council chairman at the time. He applauded. Has he changed? No. One of his first actions as president was to underscore the importance of the annual Qods Day rally.

Other Iranian figures appointed by the supreme leader have also threatened to eradicate Israel by means of nuclear weapons. Why Western diplomats believe the assurances they receive in English when the supreme leader’s inner circle says quite the opposite in Persian is something someone might want to ask America’s nuclear negotiators. Likewise, while Obama seems to embrace the pre-World War I notion of secret treaties, there is no reason why the supreme leader’s fatwa against nuclear weapons should remain secret unless, of course, the assurance which Obama so often cites simply does not exist. Certainly, if the backbone of newfound trust in Iran is such a fatwa, the White House could provide its text. That it chooses not to do so again amplifies concerns that Obama has become Khamenei’s useful idiot.

Friday, March 27, 2015

...Our current situation is unpleasant. But it isn’t the end of the world. We aren’t helpless. If we act wisely, we can stem Iran’s nuclear and regional advance. If we act boldly, we can preserve our alliance with the US while adopting a policy toward the Palestinians that for the first time in decades will advance our interests and our liberal values on the world stage.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
26 March '15..

On Wednesday, the Jerusalem Municipality announced it is shelving plans to build 1,500 apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood. Officials gave no explanation for its sudden move. But none was needed.

Obviously the construction of apartments for Jews in Jerusalem was blocked in the hopes of appeasing US President Barack Obama.

But is there any reason to believe he can be appeased? Today the White House is issuing condemnations of Israel faster than the UN.

To determine how to handle what is happening, we need to understand the nature of what is happening.

First we need to understand that the administration’s hostility has little to do with Israel’s actions.

As Max Boot explained Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, the administration’s animosity toward Israel is a function of Obama’s twin strategic aims, both evident since he entered office: realigning US policy in the Middle East toward Iran and away from its traditional allies Israel and the Sunni Arab states, and ending the US’s strategic alliance with Israel.

Over the past six years we have seen how Obama has consistently, but gradually, taken steps to advance these two goals. Toward Iran, he has demonstrated an unflappable determination to accommodate the terrorism supporting, nuclear proliferating, human rights repressing and empire building mullahs.

Beginning last November, as the deadline for nuclear talks between the US and its partners and Tehran approached, Obama’s attempts to accommodate Tehran escalated steeply.

Obama has thrown caution to the winds in a last-ditch effort to convince Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei to sign a deal with him. Last month the administration published a top secret report on Israel’s nuclear installations. Last week, Obama’s director of national intelligence James Clapper published an annual terrorism threat assessment that failed to mention either Iran or Hezbollah as threats.

And this week, the administration accused Israel of spying on its talks with Iran in order to tell members of Congress the details of the nuclear deal that Obama and his advisers have been trying to hide from them.

In the regional context, the administration has had nothing to say in the face of Iran’s takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden this week. With its Houthi-proxy now in charge of the strategic waterway, and with its own control over the Straits of Hormuz, Iran is poised to exercise naval control over the two choke points of access to Arab oil.

The administration is assisting Iranian Shi’ite proxies in their battle to defeat Islamic State forces in the Iraqi city of Tikrit. It has said nothing about the Shi’ite massacres of Sunnis that come under their control.

Parallel to its endless patience for Tehran, the Obama administration has been treating Israel with bristling and ever-escalating hostility. This hostility has been manifested among other things through strategic leaks of highly classified information, implementing an arms embargo on weapons exports to Israel in time of war, ending a 40-year agreement to provide Israel with fuel in times of emergency, blaming Israel for the absence of peace, expressing tolerance and understanding for Palestinian terrorism, providing indirect support for Europe’s economic war against Israel, and providing indirect support for the BDS movement by constantly accusing Israel of ill intentions and dishonesty.

...A reminder: in the early years of Oslo, Congress made U.S. funding for the PA contingent on full Palestinian compliance. Miracle of miracles. Every official U.S. assessment concluded that the Palestinians were in complete compliance. Expect the same automatic pass if we start moving down a timeline to the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
25 March '15..

Here’s the optimistic scenario: If Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu holds firm, President Obama will ultimately reach the conclusion that all the left wing Israelis and American Jews are wrong in their assessment that Netanyahu will capitulate to pressure. With an eye on his place in the history books, Mr. Obama will then focus on orchestrating a series of photo ops featuring him as the man who restored relations with Cuba. Don’t be surprised to see photo spreads of a presidential family vacation at a Cuban beach resort. No doubt there will also be a cute photo of his wife glaring at him as he lights up a Cuban cigar.

More likely scenario: President Obama keeps turning the screws to the very end of his term. Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t buckle to American pressure and make the best of the situation with his coalition of 67 MKs.

Worst case scenario: Buckling to pressure, Israel finds itself locked into a framework, followed by a timeline that includes step-wise Israeli withdrawals subject to Palestinian compliance.

A reminder: in the early years of Oslo, Congress made U.S. funding for the PA contingent on full Palestinian compliance. Miracle of miracles. Every official U.S. assessment concluded that the Palestinians were in complete compliance.

Expect the same automatic pass if we start moving down a timeline to the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

...In a day when the President’s chief of staff invokes the lexicon of Palestinian terrorists to describe Israel’s democracy, Americans and the world are left to wonder whose side the leader of the free world is on.

Wall Street Journal..
Review & Outlook..
24 March '15..

You’ll have to forgive President Obama. The leader of the free world is still having difficulty accepting that the Israeli people get to choose their own prime minister, never mind his preferences.

The latest White House tantrum in the wake of Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election last week took the form of a speech delivered Monday by Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, in which he declared that “an occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end.”

When a chief of staff speaks in public, especially as the keynote speaker at a scheduled event, the President has signed off. In this case the audience was also carefully chosen: the annual conference of J Street, a left-leaning Jewish lobbying group that has never met an Israeli concession it didn’t like. Which makes it all the more distressing that Mr. McDonough would talk about Israel in language usually associated with Palestinian terror groups.

Mr. McDonough’s remarks come amid other expressions of presidential pique—including last week’s unprecedented threat that Mr. Netanyahu’s re-election may mean an end to U.S. backing for Israel at the United Nations, and this week’s report in the Journal that the Israelis have been spying on the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. (Israel denies it, and we don’t condone such spying, but the U.S. also shouldn’t be keeping its allies and Congress in the dark.) Not to mention the more or less constant snubs and insults directed at the Israeli prime minister by unnamed Obama officials, with one calling him a “coward.”

Mr. Obama was counting on Mr. Netanyahu to be defeated in last week’s election, and the President did what he could to help that defeat along. But Mr. Obama’s overt hostility backfired. In the normal course of things, this would be the time for the White House to soften the rhetoric and seek to restore relationships.

Instead, the President and his team seem out for revenge. So while Mr. Netanyahu has clarified his comment about his opposition to a Palestinian state (he says he supports a two-state solution but now is not the time) and apologized to Arab Israelis for his remarks about their votes during the waning hours of the election, the President and his team have been escalating.

Perhaps this is a sign that the nuclear negotiations with Iran aren’t going as well as the President had planned, notwithstanding his willingness to let Iran preserve much of its nuclear infrastructure. So desperate is the U.S. for an Iran deal, the French look like hard-liners, hardly a consoling thought.

...While the Obama Administration is lashing out at Netanyahu after unsuccessfully trying to prevent his reelection, the Palestinians keep getting a free pass. Obama has never demanded from Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to demonstrate his commitment to the two-state solution, nor has he ever threatened to reevaluate his policy toward the PA, despite Abbas’ alliance with Hamas; despite the absence of elections in the PA since 2006; despite Abbas’ failure to respond to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s 2008 peace offer; despite Abbas’ rejection of Hillary Clinton’s 2011 peace proposal, and his rejection of John Kerry’s last year; despite Abbas’ outrageous charge of genocide against Israel from the UN General Assembly podium; despite the anti-Semitic incitement in Abbas’ state-controlled media; despite Abbas’ repeated declarations that no Jew shall be tolerated in the Palestinian state;...

Dr. Emmanuel Navon..
i24 News..
25 March '15..

Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement on election day about Arab voters was inappropriate, as he himself admitted by apologizing. But Barack Obama had no business commenting on what is an internal Israeli matter. You would think that after seven years of counter-productive Middle East policy, Obama would have learned his lesson. Not at all: in his case, nemesis nurtures hubris.

The Obama Administration is incensed at Israel these days. The President himself publicly reprimanded Israel’s Prime Minister for his election day comment, and expressed concern for the future of Israeli democracy. Obama’s Chief-of-Staff, Denis McDonough, declared at the J-Street conference this week that “an occupation that has lasted 50 years must end.” State Department Spokesperson Mary Harf stated that it is for Israel to “demonstrate commitment to a two-state solution” and hinted that the Obama Administration does not trust Netanyahu: “We just don’t know what to believe at this point”, she said.

Barack Obama’s concerns about Israeli democracy hardly sound genuine in light of recent revelations about his undercover attempts to influence the outcome of Israeli elections. Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff just revealed in The Times of Israel that a senior Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity disclosed that the Obama Administration was directly involved in an attempt to topple the Israeli Prime Minister. On March 22, Republican strategist John McLaughlin declared on “The Cats Roundtable” radio show that “President Obama and his allies were playing in the election to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu”, using US taxpayers' money to fund the V15 campaign against Netanyahu, a campaign guided by former Obama political operative Jeremy Bird.

Obama’s attempt to undermine Netanyahu went beyond V15. On March 6, less than two weeks before Election Day, Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea published a document revealing that Netanyahu had allegedly agreed to a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines with land swaps and Israeli recognition of Palestinian claims over East Jerusalem. In other words, that Netanyahu had agreed to concessions he publicly opposes. Who could possibly have leaked such a document if not the Obama Administration? Precisely because Obama was trying to turn right-wing voters away from Netanyahu with this leak, Netanyahu had no choice but to reassure those voters by declaring that a Palestinian state would not be established on his watch. To echo Mary Harf, we just don’t know what to believe at this point: two weeks ago, the Obama Administration wanted us to believe that Netanyahu was a starry-eyed peacenik; now it is warning us that he is a peace renegade.

...A week before the Israeli elections, the PA dedicated a new monument to Dalal Mughrabi. Dalal Mughrabi’s claim to fame is that she led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history. She and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel’s Coastal Highway, killing 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounding over 70. Yet you can not find coverage of this event in the Times. Does the Times really believe that actions such as these do not impact Palestinian hopes of statehood?

Yarden Frankl..
Honest Reporting..
24 March '15..

In an editorial entitled Keeping Palestinians Hopes Alive, the New York Times cites the reelection of Prime Minister Netanyahu as dealing a crushing blow to peace, an end to Palestinian hopes for an independent state. The only way forward is to freeze Israel out of the process.

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dealt a grievous blow to a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, for baldly political reasons, the idea of two states living side by side in that region remains the best alternative to violent confrontation and should not be allowed to die.

But who has really dealt a “grievous blow to a negotiated peace agreement?” Has the Times forgotten the record of what really has been going on the last few years between Israel and the Palestinians? While claiming that it is Israel and Netanyahu who are to blame, they ignore the consistent, anti-peace actions of the Palestinian Authority over the years.

The PA has partnered with Hamas, a terror organization committed to Israel’s destruction. The PA has sought recognition for statehood at the United Nations and is joining dozens of international organizations. These moves have been criticized by the US as inconsistent with peace efforts.

There has also been no reduction in the glorification of terrorism and incitement against Israel by the PA.

...There’s not much secret that Obama’s reaction to Netanyahu’s statements stems largely from his anger about the prime minister’s decisive victory, coming as it did after he spoke to Congress in opposition to the president’s push for a dangerous nuclear deal with Iran. But the problem here is not so much the way the Israeli election demonstrated again what a sore loser the president can be. Rather, it is his determination to distort the facts about the conflict to conform to his pre-existing prejudices about both Israel and Netanyahu that makes his reaction so egregious. It is exactly his fixation on peace hinging on Israel’s acceptance of two states that is so inaccurate.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
25 March '15..

If only he really meant it. During his joint press conference yesterday with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, President Obama addressed the tension between the United States and Israel by saying that American policy toward the Middle East must be rooted in reality. The remark was yet another White House jab at Prime Minister Netanyahu’s pre-election comments about not allowing a Palestinian state to be created on his watch. The president said that Netanyahu’s statement, even after he had walked it back after his election victory, had changed the reality of the region and that the U.S. can’t base future strategy on events that couldn’t happen. Fair enough. But what the president failed to note was that this is exactly what he has been doing throughout his presidency with respect to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The president’s latest shot over Netanyahu’s bow was not meant to be subtle:

I am required to evaluate honestly how we manage Israeli-Palestinian relations over the next several years. … What we can’t do is to pretend there’s a possibility of something that’s not there. And we can’t continue to premise our public diplomacy based on something that everybody knows is not going to happen at least in the next several years. That is something that we have to, for the sake of our own credibility; I think we have to be able to be honest about that.

The unspoken threat there—made more explicit in comments leaked to the press by officials speaking without direct attribution—was that the U.S. would reevaluate its willingness to stand up for Israel at the United Nations and other international forums. By making it clear that he doesn’t believe the two-state solution is possible in the foreseeable future, Netanyahu had not merely offended Obama but gave him the opportunity to fundamentally change U.S. policy in a way that would tilt it even more toward the Palestinians and against the Jewish state.

The justification for such a switch will be to head off what Obama called the possibility of complications from Netanyahu’s candor:

That may trigger, then, reactions by the Palestinians that, in turn, elicit counter-reactions by the Israelis. And that could end up leading to a downward spiral of relations that will be dangerous for everybody and bad for everybody.

That means Obama believes he must address Palestinian distress at Netanyahu’s foreclosing the possibility of their getting an independent state. The president is right about the possibility of a surge in violence, but not about its cause.

There’s not much secret that Obama’s reaction to Netanyahu’s statements stems largely from his anger about the prime minister’s decisive victory, coming as it did after he spoke to Congress in opposition to the president’s push for a dangerous nuclear deal with Iran. But the problem here is not so much the way the Israeli election demonstrated again what a sore loser the president can be. Rather, it is his determination to distort the facts about the conflict to conform to his pre-existing prejudices about both Israel and Netanyahu that makes his reaction so egregious. It is exactly his fixation on peace hinging on Israel’s acceptance of two states that is so inaccurate.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

...In sum, Israel’s democracy is so strong that even attempts to challenge that status can’t avoid confirming it. The only thing we ended up learning was that Middle East 101 is far too advanced for the AP.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
25 March '15..

Those of us who write about Middle East politics sometimes joke that the mainstream press is desperately in need of an introductory course on the subject. And now, thanks to the latest effort by the Associated Press, we’re forced to ask: What happens when reporters take Middle East 101–and fail? The AP’s Middle East editor this week tackled the burning question: “Is Israel democratic?” If you know anything at all about the country, you know that this question requires a one-word answer: Yes. The AP, however, thought it was an essay test. And what a disaster it was.

The full headline to AP editor Dan Perry’s piece is “AP Analysis: Is Israel democratic? Not so clear.” Such baldly false smears are part and parcel of the debate, of course. For some reason it’s considered acceptable practice to merely make up stuff about Israel and pass lies off as truth. It comes with the territory of being the world’s one Jewish state. But the timing here is interesting. All that’s really changed regarding Israel is President Obama’s public attitude toward it, in which his hostility toward the country and its people are being broadcast instead of denied.

...Democracy is the will of the people. It is not divided. It is not admirable when you win and detestable when you lose. The people are not wise and lucid when they vote according to your wishes and suddenly stupid or suicidal when they don’t follow your direction.

Shraga Blum..
i24 News..
22 March '15..

You should have seen them, the representatives of the media, on the sets of their respective channels. Most were hoping to announce some of the best news of their careers: the fall of the hawk, Benjamin Netanyahu. With the exit polls, showing a tie between Likud and the Zionist Union, some faces started changing color. They had desperately fought for an unlikely coalition chaired by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, but as the hours passed, the real results confirmed the victory of the right against all odds, especially the ones given it by the media. And the comments became contemptuous, aggressive, sometimes outrageous, especially on Channels 2 and 10, which had given so much in service of the sacred cause.

The sky had suddenly fallen on a whole microcosm mobilized to bring down Netanyahu: the (secretly funded) army of the V-15 organization, the cast of retired generals, artists and media circles, in short, all those who thought they were in tune with "the people", or worse, their legitimate representatives. But the people taught them a lesson, to the point that Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy echoed Yossi Sarid’s famous reaction after the reelection of Menachem Begin in 1981: "We must change the people." This kind of thinking can only come from leftists. History is rife with examples of how the exclusive champions of tolerance, law, democracy, equality and justice are often those who react unscrupulously when these values collide with their political ideology or interests of the moment.

Democracy is the will of the people. It is not divided. It is not admirable when you win and detestable when you lose. The people are not wise and lucid when they vote according to your wishes and suddenly stupid or suicidal when they don’t follow your direction. A writer who spoke at a left-wing rally three weeks ago refused to comment on Netanyahu’s victory. But before he hung up on the journalist who asked him for his reaction, he just said: "I have nothing to say to a people who chose to commit suicide." A university professor wrote on his Facebook page that "voting right was a sign of a mental disability". An Israeli actress called Netanyahu’s voters "Neanderthals" and advised them to commit suicide "because only death would save them from themselves." And this campaign reached downright surrealism on social networks when leftist voters, disappointed with the result, urged people to stop giving money to charities. The reason? Netanyahu achieved impressive results among less well-off Israelis - meaning that the disadvantaged do not live so badly since they re-elected Netanyahu.

He was not re-appointed by a coup or by dictatorship-style election fraud. He managed to mobilize voters in the final days of the campaign because he showed them how real democracy had been diverted from its original meaning. Yes, there was foreign intervention, including financial intervention, to bring him down. Yes, Arab voters were mobilized by non-governmental organizations to strengthen the left and create a blocking force against Netanyahu; yes there was an unprecedented media campaign to destroy his image and that of his wife and to delegitimize him.

But ultimately, it is the people who had the last word. Not the expectations of the elite, the European Union or President Obama. There are fictitious people in Israel and real people. It is the latter, who are too often ignored, despised and misunderstood, who won.

...Is Israel supposed to sit blind, deaf, and dumb while this is going on? ... This is a matter of survival for the Jewish State. So, while Netanyahu has made some missteps in his dealing with Obama, such as challenging his negotiating position before Congress, this is an instance where Israeli actions are understandable: If the U.S. refuses to share what could be life or death information with Israel, the Jewish State will get its information however it can. If it were put in a similar position, the U.S. or any other nation would act in the same way.

Max Boot..
Commentary Magazine..
24 March '15..

The Wall Street Journal rattled some teacups with its article today claiming that Israel is spying on the American team negotiating with Iran and sharing the results with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. It should be noted that in the article itself Israeli officials deny that they were spying on the U.S.; they say they got their information from spying on the Iranians and from information freely shared with them by the French, who are more interested in keeping the Israelis informed than the Americans are. Whether the Israeli defense is true or not I don’t know. But either way there is nothing particularly shocking going on here.

As a general matter, let us stipulate that allies should minimize the extent to which they spy on each other, if only because such revelations can be embarrassing and damaging. But the reality is that almost everyone does it. The only notable exception I’m aware of is the “Five Eyes”—the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada—which have been closely cooperating in intelligence matters since World War II. The U.S. certainly spies on allies such as France and Germany, as we discovered from Edward Snowden’s leaks. And they spy on us.

For that matter the U.S. also spies on Israel. In fact it was through such spying that Israel discovered the alleged Israeli spying. As the Journal notes: “The White House discovered the [Israeli] operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said.”

So U.S. officials are in no position to be pointing fingers at Israel. If the Journal account is to be believed, the administration is less upset by the Israeli espionage than by the Israelis sharing what they discovered with legislators: “The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.”

...To adapt George Orwell’s motto for Oceania: Under Mr. Obama, friends are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory.

Bret Stephens..
Wall St. Journal..
23 March '15..

The humiliating denouement to America’s involvement in Yemen came over the weekend, when U.S. Special Forces were forced to evacuate a base from which they had operated against the local branch of al Qaeda. This is the same branch that claimed responsibility for the January attack on Charlie Hebdo and has long been considered to pose the most direct threat to Europe and the United States.

So who should Barack Obama be declaring war on in the Middle East other than the state of Israel?

There is an upside-down quality to this president’s world view. His administration is now on better terms with Iran—whose Houthi proxies, with the slogan “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, power to Islam,” just deposed Yemen’s legitimate president—than it is with Israel. He claims we are winning the war against Islamic State even as the group continues to extend its reach into Libya, Yemen and Nigeria.

He treats Republicans in the Senate as an enemy when it comes to the Iranian nuclear negotiations, while treating the Russian foreign ministry as a diplomatic partner. He favors the moral legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council to that of the U.S. Congress. He is facilitating Bashar Assad’s war on his own people by targeting ISIS so the Syrian dictator can train his fire on our ostensible allies in the Free Syrian Army.

He was prepared to embrace a Muslim Brother as president of Egypt but maintains an arm’s-length relationship with his popular pro-American successor. He has no problem keeping company with Al Sharpton and tagging an American police department as comprehensively racist but is nothing if not adamant that the words “Islamic” and “terrorism” must on no account ever be conjoined. The deeper that Russian forces advance into Ukraine, the more they violate cease-fires, the weaker the Kiev government becomes, the more insistent he is that his response to Russia is working.

To adapt George Orwell’s motto for Oceania: Under Mr. Obama, friends are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

...but the White House said the death chants were geared to a domestic Iranian audience so it’s not a big deal. Ok.

Spencer Irvine..
Accuracy in Media..
24 March '15..

So a longtime U.S. ally’s remarks on the viability of a two-state solution offends the White House more than Iran’s “Death to America” remarks? Oh, but the White House said the death chants were geared to a domestic Iranian audience so it’s not a big deal. Ok.

Accuracy in Media is a citizens’ media watchdog whose mission is to promote accuracy, fairness and balance in news reporting. AIM exposes politically motivated media bias; teaches consumers to think critically about their news sources; and holds the mainstream press accountable for its misreporting. Visit the AIM homepage at http://www.aim.org/ Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, .

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About Me

I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!"